How can I reduce the dimensions of a PDF?

[oxband]

I have a PDF I exported from Keynote and it exported files which are 26.67x15

I need to shrink those down cause right now the file is WAY too big to send to people. If I "Reduce File Size" it in preview, the image quality is horrible and there are lots of photos.

Any suggestions? Ideally, to shrink the file size to 11x8.5 or even better to reduce the PDF size from 500 MB without sacrificing quality. I've spent two hours on this. I'm going nuts.

 

[Sawday]

Have you thought about using something like WeTransfer.com? You can send files up to 2Gb free.

 

[Rod]

Google docs will allow you to do the same thing as sawday suggests but any file sharing app will do the job. Drop Box is probably the best known. You upload your files and select share. This gives you a link on Clipboard which you can paste into multiple emails. People then just click on the link and download the files.


Sent from my iPad using Mac-Forums

 

[ferrarr]

What options are you selecting when you choose, “Reduce File Size”? Maybe we can tweak those, to get you the right “dimensions?” For your PDF images?

Which is the most important 500MB or the dimensions? And, is the 500MB for each individual image?

 

[MacInWin]

How do you "reduce file size" in Preview? I looked for that menu item and it's not there. There is a "reduce size" option under Tools, but that reduces the image, not the file size. File size does then shrink, but that's because you have a smaller image. And if that image is then blown back up to the original, data has been lost, so the image will be lower quality. I'm asking because I want to make sure we are all talking about the same thing.

 

[krs]

I have "reduce file size" in Preview in El Capitan.
It's under 'Save As' or 'Export" and then in the Quarz Filter drop down menu.

I work a lot with pdf's and reducing fie size sometimes works well and other times the results are lousy.
I have also used Adobe Acrobat and PDFelements to reduce the file size, they are not necessarily better than Preview.
The text of the reduced size pdf usually looks fine, especially if OCR has been run, but images become blurry.

For the OP's issue, I would suggest to try to reduce the Keynote charts before exporting them to pdf.
That way one can control the resolution of the images better.

 

[MacInWin]

OK, I found that. I think the OP should try Tools, Adjust size... and change the size of the image to what he wants. That may be a smarter "shrink" process than the Export process.

 

[IWT]

@oxband,

I have a simplistic, but practical view of things. If you have worked very hard to create a Keynote presentation and it's 500MB, however you send it to people, and by whatever method, you want them to share and enjoy the end result of your effort.

Any compression of any sort is going to have compromises; so it seems to me that you should concentrate on the method of sending and leave the PDF alone.

Therefore, I recommend you follow the advice of my senior colleagues above and use Dropbox, Google Docs or similar.

I regularly receive DICOM images from senders wishing a second opinion on medical matters and they are all in the GB range. Any of the methods mentioned cope very well with large files. You upload; they download via a link. Job done.

As a sort of PS - may I ask why you want a PDF version of Keynote rather than the original? Is it because not all the recipients have Macs?

Ian

 

[chscag]

To the OP:

This information is from Apple on how to send large attachments via Apple Mail:

If you want to attach files that are too large to send in email, you can use Mail Drop. It lets you upload attachments up to 5 GB and send a link or preview to your recipients. You can send these attachments from iCloud.com or from the Mail app on your iOS device (iOS 9.2 or later) or Mac (OS X 10.11 or later).

I have used this method before and it works well.

 

[oxband]

OK, I found that. I think the OP should try Tools, Adjust size... and change the size of the image to what he wants. That may be a smarter "shrink" process than the Export process.

So, you can't adjust the size of a Pdf in Preview. How did I solve this? I exported as PNG files. Then I made a pdf out of those in Adobe. Took me two hours to get that idea!

 

[pm-r]

So, you can't adjust the size of a Pdf in Preview.

I'm sorry I'm a bit late here, but I was sure you could do that, and I thought it had to do with the options using the print menu options.

So if you have to do another job like that sometime later, have a look at this site where they seem to have done just that, but ignore the title:
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension - Stack Overflow



- Patrick
======

 

[oxband]

Unless I did this wrong and i dont think I did....you can't adjust the size of the Pdf in preview....

I'm sorry I'm a bit late here, but I was sure you could do that, and I thought it had to do with the options using the print menu options.

So if you have to do another job like that sometime later, have a look at this site where they seem to have done just that, but ignore the title:
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension - Stack Overflow



- Patrick
======

 

[krs]

Unless I did this wrong and i dont think I did....you can't adjust the size of the Pdf in preview....

Depends what you mean by "size"

You can reduce the size of the pdf file in Preview, as in the number of MB's, but you can't adjust the size of the slides (ie physical dimensions) in the pdf.

I don't think you can do that in Adobe Acrobat either, Acrobat will give you a few options to reduce the number of Megabytes of the file; to reduce the physical dimensions of the slides you have to always convert the document to an image file, change the dimension of the images and then regenerate a pdf.

 

[krs]

I'm sorry I'm a bit late here, but I was sure you could do that, and I thought it had to do with the options using the print menu options.

So if you have to do another job like that sometime later, have a look at this site where they seem to have done just that, but ignore the title:
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension
Adobe Acrobat Pro make all pages the same dimension - Stack Overflow



- Patrick
======

I have to remember this link, maybe bookmark it.

I often create pdf's where the first and last page are smaller than the rest, maybe one of the suggestions actually works.

I found Preview doesn't always create a satisfactory pdf - it depends what one starts with.
Often the images are in the wrong spot or even half cut off - Acrobat is sometimes better and I even "splurged" for PDFelements recvently to have another option.